Hecaloth

a story from the Eclipse Phase universe

a story from the Eclipse Phase universe

We don’t get a choice about whether the singularity arrives. Arrive it will. This my superiors at Bletchley never grasped. They thought we could trot from city to city, from Outback to Arctic, putting out fires, and somehow, between us, the Yanks, and the Europeans, we’d keep a lid on it. But when you stand before the mountain of evidence, the cases of emergent behavior, the threat posed by self-replicating nanoscale artificial organisms… becomes clear, doesn’t it? We have much to prepare for, but instead, we’re trying to erase the only data points that could show us the shape of things to come. As plans go, it’s a poor one. When the fall comes, it’ll be swift, unless we make real preparations. And luckily, I’m not the only one who thinks so.

—John Bainbridge, former agent of Bletchley Park

Hecaloth tells the story of the singularity gone wrong that forced humanity to flee from Earth. The point of view characters are a flying squad from Bletchley Park, the division of MI6 tasked to investigate and deal with hostile AGIs, dangerous artificial life, nanoplagues, and other existential threats to transhumanity.

The story begins in Chicago, during a talk on data archeology at the Museum of Science & Industry.